With the opening of the final section of New York's High Line last month, the city can finally take stock on an urban transformation that took a decade and a half from idea to reality - and which in the five years since the first section opened has become one of the great phenomena of 21st century urban planning, inspiring copycat proposals in cities around the globe. In this article, originally published by Metropolis Magazine as "The High Line's Last Section Plays Up Its Rugged Past," Anthony Paletta reviews the new final piece to the puzzle, and examines what this landmark project has meant for Manhattan's West Side.
The promise of any urban railroad, however dark or congested its start, is the eventual release onto the open frontier, the prospect that those buried tracks could, in time, take you anywhere. For those of us whose only timetable is our walking pace, this is the experience of the newly opened, final phase of the High Line. The park, after snaking in its two initial stages through some 20 dense blocks of Manhattan, widens into a broad promenade that terminates in an epic vista of the Hudson. It’s a grand coda and a satisfying finish to one of the most ambitious park designs in recent memory.
Now fully realized, the High Line’s meandering plan produces a pleasing figure. Oriented almost linearly north-south, the park runs from the Meatpacking District to Hudson Yards, before it suddenly curls—like an inverted question mark—due west towards the Hudson. Its lengthy curve through the site was dictated, like that of the looping Lincoln Tunnel onramps in Weehawken just across the river, by engineering exigencies to handle grade change in limited space. Phase Three’s design, by landscape firm James Corner Field Operations with architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, emblazons this fact. While southerly portions are replete with forking paths and landscaping that intentionally obscures and tantalizes the view ahead, the park’s last stretch grows suddenly and arrestingly wide. There’s space for ample seating on all sides, with a school of those almost-Seussical wood benches positioned directly astride the central promenade. They seamlessly fold down into the “peeled” concrete deck, demanding only that you sit down for a moment.
